Address and Phone Number

We're working on Marshall memorizing our address and phone number. Today we were practicing in the boys room as Coen played. Marshall got restless and frustrated and leaned over to turn the white noise machine to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. As it played in the background, I started singing our number in tune to the song. Here's what I came up with...

Our area code is 555 - 555 3979
555 3979
555 3979
Our phone number is 555 - 555 3979

Download N Go Review: Terrific Tigers

Disclaimer: As a member of the Download N Go review team I am provided with a PDF copy of the unit study to use, review, and post about on this blog. No other compensation is provided. Thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
We are halfway through our Terrific Tigers Unit from
Download N Go. Being sick knocked us out for a few days, so we're a little behind.

So far we've learned about 3 different tigers, gone to the zoo, and had a lot of fun!

Marshall has been pretending he's a tiger and we're grateful for the break from being a robot and a dinosaur. Our toddler, Coen, even has his own little growl down. It's so cute!

Speaking of growls, I think one of the most interesting things I've learned in this unit is the different names for tiger's growls! A growl is a growl, right? Wrong! People who work with tigers actually have a few different names for different types of growls.

Marshall's favorite part was the jokes. He saw them in with the lapbook pieces and just had to practice a few before we could get started. He had a fun time retelling them to Dad when he got home from work.

Aside from jokes and growls, we have also done 2 tiger puzzles, one on-line, and one that was in the unit to be cut out.

Download N Go is quickly becoming a favorite of mine for 3 main reasons:
1. For the ease of use. Everything you need comes in the download for a low, low price! Just download and go, like the name implies!
2. Because the units cover a wide range of subjects like geography and map skills, to fun things like puzzles and craft suggestions. I love integrated curriculum!
3. These units are extremely well organized. They have a 5 main points on which they build the day's studies (see below). Each day has a subset of topics as well. This helps tremendously so Marshall and I don't feel like we're just wandering about aimlessly. There is direction and order.

Day 1: What Is a Tiger?
Day 2: Getting to Know Tigers
Day 3: Where Are the Tigers?
Day 4: The Science of Tigers
Day 5: Cool Things About Tigers

Here is the inside of our lapbook. We just have to finish up a couple pieces.

The frame of the cut out puzzle. I'm teaching Marshall to find the corners, then the edges before filling in the middle.

Coen and Marshall at Kansas City Zoo! We lucked out - residents are free in October and November!!

The zoo's very own Sumatran Tiger!! When I told Marshall what kind it was he said, "Hey, that's the first kind we learned about!" I was happily surprised he remembered such a fact. But my proud mommy moment came when our friend asked her mom "What do tigers eat?" And Marshall was the one who replied, "They eat deer and other animals because they're carnivores."

To see what other reviewers had to say check out the Terrific Tigers Blog Tour! This post will be linked up there as well.

Download N Go is a product of The Old Schoolhouse.

Let me end with a joke. See if your kid/s found the hilarity in it that Marshall did.

What did the tiger say to his friends before they went hunting for dinner?
Let us prey.

Download N Go Review: Rocking Robots

Disclaimer: As a member of the Download N Go review team I am provided with a PDF copy of the unit study to use, review, and post about on this blog. No other compensation is provided. Thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
I have exciting news! I was chosen to be part of Download N Go's review team!! Our first review was for a unit I had been eying - Rocking Robots. Marshall often pretends to be a robot, walking around like one and using a mechanical voice to talk. Ironically my last post was about winding him up to do his work. So this was a very fun, appropriate unit for him.


The Old Schoolhouse offers DNG unit studies at only $7.95 each. They come loaded with 110 (in this case) pages of fun. There is something for every learner. Each Download N Go unit has links to the web to read, watch, and learn about the topic at hand, that you can link to right from the PDF. After visiting a link or two, there are questions or activities to do to help recall and remember what you just learned. Also included are lapbook pieces showcasing your weeks' work. They also give a list of recommended books to read during the week. While the books are fun and helpful to delve more into the topic of robots, everything you absolutely need for the unit is right in the Download N Go PDF. So if you're in a bind and need a unit study STAT, DNG is way easy to do on the fly!I used Rocking Robots with Marshall, my 5 year old. The recommended grade level is kindergarten - fourth grade. There is a lot of information covered, including history, science, math, language (vocabulary words), and hands on fun with drawing and crafts as well.

This week we learned:
Day 1: What Is a Robot?
Day 2: The History of Robots
Day 3: People and Places of Robots
Day 4: Science Secrets of Robots
Day 5: Goodies and Gadgets of Robots

Between the time I was chosen for the review team and the time I had to have this posted by, only gave us a week to do the unit. While the Download N Go studies are designed to be completed in only a week, for a younger child (like my 5yo) I would recommend spreading it across 2 weeks OR simply go through the unit first and find what will be most age appropriate attention span-wise for your child/ren. A couple of the days had us online looking at robot clips and reading web pages here and there for about 2 hours. Marshall got bored and wiggly. The great thing about Download N Go though, is that you can take it and make it your own and tailor it to your son or daughter's interests! The activities and hands-on suggestions were fun, educational, and also provided a nice break from the computer work.

We learned about robots in space.

A fun dot-to-dot, always a hit!

As a science experiment, we made a water clock. To find out what that is, you'll just have to visit Download N Go and get a Rocking Robots unit of your own!

I am linking this post up to the Rocking Robots Blog Tour. Check out what some other reviewers had to say about Rocking Robots!

Robots at School

Marshall went into his fantasy world today during Math because he didn't want to do it. Today's fantasy world consisted of being a robot and shutting down after each task. Instead of battling him over it, I rolled with it because he's my only student. He's not in a class with 29 other kids and a teacher who can't take time out for him to come to grips. So I was his programmer and every time he shut down I had to tickle his "on" switch on his back to reboot him. I gave him his instructions in my mechanical robot voice, too. And you know what? It worked! And this is why we homeschool.

A Day in the Life

I've been wanting to participate in the NOT Back-to-School Blog Hop on Heart of the Matter. I didn't get my act together in time to link up to the first 3 weeks, but better late than never, right? So here goes...

We are just getting going in our homeschool. I have a bad history of creating unrealistic schedules for myself. So right now we're just trying to be flexible but still maintain a routine.

I have early risers and I, myself, am so NOT a morning person! Luckily my sweet, sweet husband gets up with the kids most mornings. They are up at 6:30 and do breakfast together.

When he leaves I get up and fill in the nutritional cracks. {Basically a morning snack, or breakfast #2}. Then I have Marshall get dressed and brush his teeth by himself while I get our toddler, Coen ready for the day. If the house needs a disaster clean-up, I do it now so that our "school room" {aka living room} is free of distractions. If I needed to focus in college, I needed the house clean first!

Between 9:00 and 10:00 we are ready to start our day. We begin with family prayer and scripture reading. This will grow to include the memorization of our Primary's {children's organization} theme and scripture for the month. We also work on 2 of the children's hymns from our church's children's songbook.

Right after our morning "devotional" time, if you will, we have math. My son loves math and with a toddler around I need to keep it moving or Marshall will get distracted. Math is an easy next step to our day.

After math we have lunch, and sometimes I let Marshall watch a tv show while I get it ready. If it has been a rough morning, I'll use a tv show at this time as a bribe {I know, I know}.

The boys usually run around playing after lunch. It wears Coen out for naptime and keeps them both entertained while I clean up. Coen will go down about 12:30-1:00 most days.

Next up for me and Marshall is the dreaded reading and phonics. This is the hardest part of our day by far. He wiggles and squirms, complaining the whole time which just draws out the instruction time. Ugh! Even with the fun unit study coming next, he just fights me on this.

Like I said, next comes our unit study. We begin by reading several books then we do some lapbook pieces, worksheets I have printed off, and usually and art & craft project. Usually Coen wakes up at some point during this and is able to get his hands on some paint or other project, too. This is an easy thing to incorporate him into.

After Marshall is done we clean up, I get dinner ready, and Daddy comes home to see what we've done! Our read-a-loud time is done in bed at night.

So far, that's what we have found works for us. As we go I hope to include more into our day, but for now it's a good starting framework to build around.

The dinosaurs are becoming extinct around here

Every good unit study probably starts out with a trip to the library, right?! I was sick the week before we started this, so I sent my hubby to the library. He was convinced I had left an empty shelf somewhere with all the dinosaur books I put on hold. But by getting a variety of fiction and non-fiction books, I was able to teach Marshall about the 2 genres. Whenever we read one of these books, I have him tell me if it's fiction or non-fiction. It's great for him to be able to distinguish between real fact books and made-up stories.

{I know of at least 3 more in the bedroom that I don't dare go get for fear of waking somebody up.}

Marshall asked for more dino stuff to do every single day. Until today that is. I think we're all dinoed out. Which is good, it means he learned all there was to learn and now it's boring so we'll move on to the next thing...just as soon as I figure out exactly what that is. I have ideas a-plenty, so we'll see what we land on.

But first, I wanted to give dino-credit where dino-credit is due:

The bulk of our lapbook pieces came from Homeschool Share which has awesome lapbooks for FREE!! I chose to not use the creationist pieces for this lapbook and supplemented the space in the lapbook with other fun things I found online. Unless otherwise noted, all pieces came from Homeschool Share.

Marshall's artwork adorns the cover. The directions to draw the T-Rex (which turned into an "Everything Dinosaur") came from Rob Court's book "How to Draw Dinosaurs" that I found at our local library. While the 6-step directions included more like 12 steps, I liked the format of this book and Marshall didn't seem to mind it. I would say it's more for 8 and up though.

As you open up the lapbook, we have the sequence card set on the flap. He put them in order but got a little confused on the numbering. The cards came from Making Learning Fun. In the middle is the dinosaur height graph and the dinosaur shape count (Making Learning Fun). I printed 3 of these and stapled them onto a colored background. On the next flap we have the Paleontologist and Dinosaur matchbooks in which Marshall defined each word for me and I wrote his definition down.

Turn the page and we have 2 more matchbooks, Extinction and Favorite Fact. On the next full page there are 3 dinosaur adjective pieces (template at Homeschool Share). We read "Thesaurus Rex" then talked about adjectives, synonyms, and what a thesaurus is. Then I asked him to give me 3 adjectives that describe dinosaurs and I wrote these on the templates. Then next project was to find the continents certain types of dinosaur skeletons have been found on. In an effort make more educational for Marshall, not just "glue this here and that there," I decided to show him how to do research using table of contents in "DK Great Dinosaur Atlas" and "The Usborne World Atlas of Dinosaurs" to get the answers. As it turns out several of the continent/dinosaur match-ups that the lapbook creator had together were not correct. Being the perfectionist I am, I decided to just rearrange the pieces for our mini-book. The final flap includes game cards for Memory that Marshall colored and enjoyed playing with. We did a variation of Go Fish he insisted be called Go Dinosaur as well as standard memory. We also have our reptile book that compares dinosaurs to today's reptiles.


The crafts we have done so far include:
Paleontologist toilet paper tube puppet

Ptronodon toilet paper tube puppet
Brachiosaurus rainbow shape
Stegosaurus rainbow shape

(all from Making Learning Fun)

Ptronodon toilet paper tube puppet
{in his favorite color - pink}

The "rainbow shape" Dinosaurs

The clothespin cards from Making Learning Fun were also a huge hit, although a bit too easy for him:

And on the back, another Marshall-drawn dinosaur.

Along with lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share, and fun activities from Making Learning Fun, we also used worksheets from Learning Page, though you'll have to become a member (it's free). I may put in a third file folder and use over-sized brads to attach the worksheets so I can keep everything from the unit together.

To wrap it all up, we're taking Marshall to a Dinosaur Exhibit at a local science museum. It's only around for another month or so and I figured this would be perfect timing to go check it out!! I can't wait to surprise him Saturday morning :D

Another successful day!

But I have a couple questions for any veteran homeschool moms that may be reading this...

1) Our lapbook pieces aren't staying on very well with an Elmer's gluestick...what do you use?!

2) Marshall is plowing through the dinosaur unit! I planned on it taking about 2 weeks, but at the rate he's going (3 1/2 hours today!) we'll be done by Friday. Do you slow it down, or let them go? I guess I better get my tush in gear for the next unit study!

Also...a Dinosaur Unit Resources post is in the works!

First Day of School & Dinosaur Unit

I could not have asked for a better first day of kindergarten for Marshall! There were no tears shed as we hugged goodbye outside his classroom door, no wondering if I was making the right decision, or if I would regret sending him. Nope, not here! I loved every minute of it and I know he did too!

Marshall started with a little attitude this morning, he wanted to play a computer game instead of start school. After getting dressed, with teeth brushed, and all ready for the day, I promised him if he worked hard he could earn time to play Reader Rabbit.

We started off with a prayer and that really seemed to set the tone for the day. After that things came together pleasantly and we had a fun day full of learning! After gospel study we moved onto Moving with Math. I am loving this curriculum!

We would have done our calendar/nursery rhyme memorization, etc. in between gospel and math, but it's not finished yet. Or even started. I fully intended on making a calendar board but was sick the better half of last week :P

Despite being unprepared for that, our new morning routine went as well as could be expected with a destructive toddler on-board.

comparing sizes

Coen, our toddler, wanted some hands-on play too!
Here he is lining up the teddy bear counters.

After math we took a break for playtime with mommy and the computer time, as promised.

special playtime with mommy

let's see how high we can make it!

After lunch and more playtime, Coen went down for nap so Marshall and I could focus on reading and our new unit study - Dinosaurs!! Marshall is really resisting our phonics instruction - Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons - so I resorted to a flash card phonics quiz and having him read me Bob books. He only missed "u" in the flash cards, he gets it mixed up with "n." After reading a Bob book he asked to read another! He is a great reader, just doesn't like 100EZ for some reason. Any suggestions? I don't have the money for a new program right now.

Thanks to PBS's "Dinosaur Train," Marshall has shown a huge interest in these terrible lizards lately. I decided to go with it and make it our first unit study, a fun way for him to get into school and get used to the routine. I also wanted to introduce him to lapbooks. So we read 6 books about dinosaurs. I sent my hubby to get the books I had on hold for this unit last week and he was convinced I had cleared out the dinosaur section, hehe.

here he is tracing a skeleton and the letter b for bones

he assembled a toilet paper tube paleontologist

Coen woke up as we were doing the lapbook and wanted in on some coloring action

as he put the colored pencils back in, he was very precise about having all the tips pointed out

We drew a T-Rex using the book "How to Draw Dinosaurs" by Rob Court. Marshalls turned into an "everything dinosaur" and he used it for the art on the cover of his lapbook.

ordering some sequence cards - eggs, hatching, baby, grown-up

Coen learning how to cut with the "shar" for sharp, his word for scissors. And knives.

We read 2 books about how big the dinosaurs were. As we got to each dinosaur in the book, Marshall would fill in the graph.

Tonight we read the chapter book "Dinosaur Detectives" by Ted Enik as our read-aloud. It's a Magic School Bus Science chapter book.

That about wraps up our first day of school!

Update

Between travels and moving across the country the first half of the year, I didn't make much time for this blog. But it doesn't mean we haven't been doing any school!

I have been working like mad to get stuff put together in time to officially start Monday, August 16th as that is when public school starts here. I probably won't always follow their schedule but it seemed like a good official start date. My husband and I only made our final decision last Friday, a week ago. So while I've been bursting with ideas and curricula for several months I am only now getting around to gathering it all. It is quite overwhelming but so exciting at the same time!

I made up a weekly schedule of sorts last night using Homeschool-ideas.com's outline. I tailored it to our needs but liked the overall look of it and ability to just write in the lesson # or book we will be reading.

I love that I can just fill it in each week, print it off to look at, then store it in our portfolio. Easy peasy! I also updated my Curriculum Page as well as About Me, so check those out if you're interested. Thanks for reading!

We took a little break..

but we're back to it this week! I was tired, stressed, and Marshall was fighting me about school time every day. But we started up a couple days ago and I think a little break was a good idea. Marshall is always excited about Math, but even reading became easier this week. He stuck to it until the end! Yay! It's so much nicer not to have to constantly remind him to sit up straight and calm down, and eyes on the page and all that. Today I reminded him how well he has been doing and told him I would wait until he was ready to do it nicely. It worked and a second later he was focused!

Math has been a breeze. I still am really loving MWM and all the accompanying library books. He loves the reading component, it makes for good snuggle time with mom, too. He chooses to start with Math each day and when he's done he knows reading time is next. So far he's mostly learning about colors, sorting, classifying, etc. We've also been reading and doing activities to introduce the calendar and weather, which we do every day now. And today we learned sequencing of events: first, next, last and read about Jesse Bear's day. The books we've been getting from the library help introduce and reinforce what he is learning.

This week we also added a Social Studies theme. Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentine's this year, February 14th. So we're reading TONS of library books about Chinese New Year and culture. We did a Tiger puzzle yesterday (2010 is the Year of the Tiger) and learned some words describing people born in that year (supposedly). Today we read about the "dragon dance" in the Chinese New Year celebration and so he did a dot-to-dot printable I found of a Dragon. I had some more activities ready but the baby woke up from his nap.

We've been working straight through nap time, 2-3 hours, which means Marshall's attention span is getting longer and he can focus and get through it all. I think the schedule helps too though. Letting him choose what to do first (Math) then reading and he knows as soon as it's over we do more fun reading and projects (which he really loves). Right now it's a good set-up and we'll continue to add to our day. We seem to be running out of time but I'm nervous about how it will go if we do it while we have a toddler around. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we need to!

Day 1

Today we started Moving with Math - Kindergarten. My son loved it! I like that it includes picture books into the curriculum, although I didn't really see a connection between the book and the lesson other than bears and caves. I guess that's enough and if you wanted to you could plan a whole unit on bears (which is actually a great idea). Once I had read the books and done the lesson with him, he was able to do the worksheet on his own, which was nice. Afterwards he played with the bear counters by making them dive into a pretend swimming pool.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is always a bit more of a challenge to get him to do. We started back in summer, but he told me he didn't want to learn how to read until he was 5. So the day after his birthday he was ready. I made him a "Road to Reading" poster with 100 squares along a winding road. Every 20 squares he colors in he gets to choose a "date night" with mom and dad to any place he wants. His first choice was Jungle Jims, similar to Chucky Cheese. Today we did lesson 31 and his next outing will be to a sledding hill with a tow rope. He also earns TV time each afternoon after he completes his 100 EZ lesson and writing practice.

Every homeschool source I read said "start where you are." So I took it to heart and that's what we've been doing. I am adding one subject at a time, hopefully each month. We're doing a mix of preschool and kindergarten learning. I've gathered what he should be learning from the state's scope & sequence as well as The Core Knowledge Foundation's two books: "What Your Preschooler Needs to Know" and "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know."

In February I hope to do a few mini-unit studies. We'll be reading about and doing activities for Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, and of course The Olympics! Right now I'm getting whatever I can for free online and at the library.

I hope to develop a good reader base so I can get good tips and suggestions. I am also hoping that by blogging about our homeschool experience I will someday help someone just starting out, like myself. I can't even tell you how many blogs I have read in the last 6 months or so all having to do with homeschooling! I've read countless curriculum reviews to decide what direction to take with my son. I am so excited about this journey we are about to embark on! (Although really it's a continuation of what I've been teaching him from birth.)

Enjoy!